Thursday, May 18, 2006

NOD32 Antivirus system

I came 2 know about this particular AV from dj. I was a Norton worshipper back then. I firmly believed that if a system can take it Norton is the best bet. I happened 2 read a review of NOD32 which told me that this is the AV solution used in the Microsoft testin labs. Assumin that the people there aint stupid i decided 2 get rid of norton and all its updates. I wasnt usin the standalone Norton AV but the complete package labelled as Norton Internet Security which had a firewall with the AV(the NIS firewall is one of the best in the buisness).The first noticable difference is obviously the system speed. Ull see a major boost when u switch to NOD32 as the 2 of its processes hogs up just abt 10 MB compared to 16+ processes of Norton. A unique feature inherent to NOD32 is a file system monitor which consistently keeps scannin the files in ur HDD one at a time hoggin a memeory of less than 1meg. The full system scan is lightning fast compared to that of norton, and i dont think it missed anthing. I tried throwin a few things onto its way( a couple of keyloggers, the old parsed JPEG exploit file, the new parsed WMF exploit file), it caught all. Plus it has all the usual stuff like the document scanner and all and scans inside archives. I even tried downloadin the win32.blackmal mass mailing worm(was a huge risk:D) which disabled many leadin AV's like Norton and McAfee. NOD32 cleaned it up with ease.Heres a screenshot of the NOD32 interfaceThis is defenitely one of the plus points of NOD32. The interface is lightning fast compared to the sluggish interface of Norton. I didnt mention McAfee here for two reasons 1) I havent used it:D 2) The fiasco with their update was enough to keep me away from it(for the less informed, a cpl of months back an official McAfee update flaggd the associated files of many programs which included softwares from Adobe and even Microsoft Office and deleted them rendering many a pc useless). In the end a very satisfying switch:-) --th3_d4r3d3vi1